Yann Moix, who is 50 himself, told women's magazine Marie Claire he was "incapable" of loving a woman his age, and preferred dating younger women, especially those of Korean, Chinese and Japanese descent.

"I prefer younger women's bodies, that's all. End of. The body of a 25-year-old woman is extraordinary. The body of a woman of 50 is not extraordinary at all," said Moix, an award-winning author and television host.

"It's perhaps sad and reductive for the women I go out with but the Asian type is sufficiently rich, large and infinite for me not to be ashamed," he told the magazine.

Moix's comments attracted global outrage, particularly on social media, with one 52-year-old journalist posting a now-deleted photo of her backside on social media.

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"Voila, the buttocks of a woman aged 52 ... what an imbecile you are, you don't know what you're missing," journalist Colombe Schneck wrote on her Instagram account.

Others posted photos of movie stars aged their 50s, including Halle Berry, Jennifer Aniston and Monica Bellucci, to argue against his claims that older women were not attractive.

Responding to the criticisms, Moix told local radio on Monday that he could not help that he preferred younger women.

"I like who I like and I don't have to answer to the court of taste," Moix told RTL radio.

"Fifty-year-old women do not see me either. They have something else to do than to get around a neurotic who writes and reads all day long. It's not easy to be with me," he said. 

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